work to forge himself a wife, a wife of silver, a bride of
gold. Very beautiful she is, but she has no heart, and she is always cold,
and there is no comfort in her; even all the magic of the world-maker can
not give her a warm heart. But the work is so beautiful that he does not
like to destroy it. So he takes the wife of silver, the bride of gold, to
the wisest of heroes, Wainamoinen, and offers her to him as a gift. But
the hero will have no such gift, "Throw her back into your forged fire, O
Ilmarinen," the hero makes answer--"What greater folly, what greater
sorrow can come upon man than to love a wife of silver, a bride of gold?"

This pretty story needs no explanation; the moral is simply "Never marry
for money."

Then there is the story of Lemminkainen (this personality suggested the
Pau-puk-keewis of Longfellow)--the joyous, reckless, handsome, mischievous
pleasure-lover,--always falling into trouble, because he will not follow
his mother's advice, but always loved by her in spite of his follies. The
mother of Lemminkainen is a more wonderful person than the mother of
Kullervo. Her son has been murdered, thrown into a river--the deepest of
all rivers, the river of the dead, the river of hell. And his mother goes
out to find him. She asks the trees in the forest to tell her where her
son is, and she obliges them to answer. But they do not know. She asks the
grass, the plants, the animals, the birds; she obliges even the road upon
which he walked to talk to her, she talks to the stars and the moon and
the sun. Only the sun knows, because he sees everything and he answers,
"Your son is dead, torn to pieces; he has been thrown into the river of
Tuoni, the river of hell, the river of the dead." But the mother does not
despair. Umarinen, the eternal smith, must make for her a rake of brass
with teeth long enough to reach into the world of the dead, into the
bottom of the abyss; and out of the abyss she brings up the parts of the
torn body of her son; she puts them together; she sings over them a magic
song; she brings her son to life again, and takes him home. But for a long
time he is not able to remember, because he has been dead. After a long
time he gets back his memory--only to get into new mischief out of which
his mother must help him afresh.

The names of the three heroes quoted to you represent also the names of
three great stories, out of the many stories contained in the epics. But
in this epic, as in th